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It seems at this point all three console making companies have realized they really don't need to attend E3 when they can just do pre-made presentations with little chance of a live screw up (I still recall things like how all the wireless signal interference back in 2011 made for things like Skyward Sword's live presentation to have controller sync issues, and during the Modern Warfare 3 demo at Microsoft's show the Xbox 360 controller disconnected in the middle of the demo). I still recall when Nintendo announced they wouldn't do a stage presentation back in 2013 and instead just a Direct and people were saying "welp this will be the death of Nintendo's marketing" but now I'm seeing more people say they genuinely prefer Nintendo Direct style presentations, and now every console maker has embraced this format. Nintendo Direct, Sony State of Play, and even Microsoft is a bit more overt by calling their new thing "Developer Direct" (well they are best buds with Nintendo), and a few third parties have even got their own pre-recorded presentations like "Ubisoft Forward" and "Devolver Direct."

Geoff Keighly did take the opportunity to take a subtle dig at E3 by reminding people he'll be doing his Summer Games Fest around the same time, and it's possible he could get one of the first party companies to do a reveal for it too.

Why did they use live presentations in the first place? Did they allow audience participation or something? Because that's the only significant advantage I can think of.

Why live presentations? Looking at some old E3 footage (90's here), it seems aside from game trailers, they were also presenting stuff like new hardware and generally felt like a fun community event. I'm not sure how exactly to describe it so here's some footage:

Lots of stage performances, and what I think is unique merchandise (I'm just skimming, it's 3 hours long). But over the years, as video games became more mainstream, E3 gradually became more corporatized and sanitized (For example, look 1 hour and 35 minutes into footage. Think you'd see that these days?) the various stage performances and skits dropped in quality; and as such became less exciting and worth the cost of visiting the convention center. So predictably, attendance gradually dropped over the years. And it seemed Nintendo was the first to figure out that you could just post trailer compilations on the internet (the Nintendo direct) and I suppose that was the beginning of the end, with Sony following suit. Then, COVID further accelerated things along, and I guess it has led us to where we are now…

That's my best guess

I can only imagine the goofs and fumbles that could happen if they tried to incorporate audience participation into their presentations